


Facing the Malfoy Menace

by hauntedpoem



Series: Hawthorn & Holly [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Coping Mechanisms, Crack Treated Seriously, Depression, Dinner, Draco Malfoy Cooks, Drarry, Drunken Flirting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, February - Freeform, Flirting, Fluff, Innuendo, Lots of wine, M/M, Malfoy Manor (Harry Potter), No Sex, Ollivander's wands, Valentine's Challenge, Wand lore, Wine, frisky wands, that blasted Malfoy chandelier, wands flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29400513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem
Summary: Unhealthy coping mechanisms, wand lore, home-cooked dinners, wine drinking, wizards flirting, frisky wands and plenty of innuendoes. Hooray!“I’m sure it is, Potter, I’m sure you have to be de-nargled pretty soon. I could try and de-nargle you pretty hard.” He said in a faux-threatening voice that made Harry giggle. “Back to my wand now, Potter, all ten inches of melancholy-ridden reasonably springy wood of it!” His pale ash-blond eyebrow wiggles suggestively and Harry was positive that Malfoy got very sloshed by drinking only four glasses of wine.This is my Valentine special continuation to my "No in-betweens" fic.In Malfoy's words: "All that wand lore messed with your head, Potter.Cheers!
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: Hawthorn & Holly [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2159790
Kudos: 11





	Facing the Malfoy Menace

**Author's Note:**

> This had to be done. I am so fond of this pairing as I've portrayed it in this fic. There's innocent banter/ flirting, Malfoy's usually clever retorts, Harry's love of treacle tart and some very nasty memories of Malfoy Manor. Also, featuring wands fucking... literally.
> 
> Since this started with an obsession of mine for druidism, cooking and wand lore... I thought I might continue. If "No in-betweens" was set from October - February, this one is February-only.  
> I cannot promise a continuation of sorts. It would be nice to find the time and progress things between these two but for now, I'm having fun writing T-rated drarry fiction.

Harry remembers only bits and pieces from that night. Malfoy asked him, no, ordered him to sit down. He didn’t look too well himself, just disappeared and appeared with a silver tray and the tea set. Pureblood noble boy playing hospitality with the saviour. Malfoy never ceased in voicing his discontent. He was a perfectly capable host, though.

“Sit down, Hairy!” Malfoy’s voice never failed to sound posh and articulate, not even when he expiated the most random insults Harry could think of. He’d been called “hairy” by Malfoy when they were students. He’s been called many names: hairy, crackpot, putter, four eyes, scar head, saviour, martyr, saint Potter and many more. He still had a _Potter stinks_ badge somewhere in his trunk, still glowing with green Malfoy magic by the looks of it.

He’s probably fallen unconscious there on the very posh velvet sofa in the living room and when he woke up, he’d be escorted by the same old house-elf to a bathroom to clean up. Draco did not join him at breakfast which was a very sordid affair. Sitting there, in the same grand room Voldemort once held court with his Death Eaters and eating a simple, innocuous breakfast.

“Master’s having a headache. He will not be joining you.”

At which Harry mumbled an “I should know”, with a mouth full of toast. For a split second, the house-elf looked disgusted at his lack of manners but began pouring hot tea into a porcelain cup as if to drown Harry’s munching.

“When is he going to see me, then?” Harry asked.

“The Young Master will extend a formal invitation to Harry Potter, Sir. He is rather indisposed at the moment.”

“Well, he can cut to the chase. Just tell ‘im tha’ “ - Harry swallows the last piece after dabbing it in the apricot jam for an easier glide – “I’m free and all that. Anytime, really!”

The House Elf watches him with infinite patience.

“I am at Grimmauld all day. He can’t miss it - or maybe he can – but I’ll make sure he can’t miss it and… you know what? Do you have any more jam to give me, please?” Harry motioned with his piece of toast, bare of anything.

A small jar appears on the table and Harry dumps half of its contents on the toast in front of him.

“Master Draco will let you know when.” The house elf’s words were final. Harry looks dejectedly towards it. Malfoy elves, when they are not mistreated they are quite overbearing. Well… they are all overbearing. Must be a Malfoy trait.

“Is your master paying you? … erm…Pokey?”

“Alexander,” the elf corrected Harry. “Yes, my master is paying me to manage the Manor.”

Alexander… such a strange name for an elf. He must ask Hermione whether it broke the strange tradition of short, easy to shout elf names or downright terrible ones. Kreacher was one such example. And why were they called house-elves, in the first place?

Unerringly, Harry flinched as his eyes landed on the chandelier. Why would Malfoy keep that? As a reminder? Did it give him pleasure, watching it hang down over his guests in that nightmare-inducing room? Harry supposed it did not. Perhaps it was on par with Wally's portrait and had a permanent charm holding it strapped to the ceiling. 

“Very well, then,” Harry managed to say as he avoided Alexander’s large eyes in a very obvious manner. They reminded him of Dobby but in a very strange way. “I will take my leave, then.”

And so, he did. Harry left the Manor on foot until he reached the large, rusty gates where he disapparated with a pop.

Back at Grimmauld, he settled into one of his funks once more. In the drawing-room downstairs, he moped and drank and sometimes leafed through home-decor magazines - muggle ones or Dark magic books he took from the library upstairs. Kreacher shuffled about tersely until he sat on a pillow in front of the large fireplace, his back towards Harry. Harry was leafing today through one of the cursed tomes that depicted in great detail several curses destined specifically for house doxies - it was for research purposes only. Harry's doxy colony kept growing because he fed them regularly with leftovers. Harry made a bunch of ham sandwiches with sliced tomatoes, salad leaves and cheddar. Kreacher was eating one right now, staring mindlessly into the fireplace. The whole thing strangely reminded him of the Dursleys.

“Why did they name you Kreacher, by the way?” he inquired as he just closed the heavy tome and placed it under the pillow of the sofa. He rested his head on it but gave up as his neck twisted at a painful angle. It was too high for his liking.

Kreacher turned his head towards Harry and Harry thought he heard a metallic twist as if the elf was a rusty, old machine.

“The old mistress named me.” Kreacher specified.

“Walburga?”

“Yes,” Kreacher nodded. “I was a wedding gift to her from her husband.”

“you mean her cousin who became her husband…” Harry corrected.

“Yes, indeed. The mistress of the house named me Kreacher because upon seeing me she told her husband to take that filthy creature away from her.” Kreacher’s ears plopped sadly about his wrinkled face. He took another sandwich, bit into it then took a gulp of his large cocoa drink to wash it down.

“Did you know that pointy-git-Malfoy has an elf named Alexander?” Kreacher just eyed Harry with discontent. “You can always change your name if you want to.” This was not a good conversation between them. Kreacher grumbled something, turned around and drank the whole mug of hot cocoa in one motion between sending it disappearing with a soft pop. He took his pillow and departed back into his room, Regulus Black’s room. Any friendly exchange between them was over, as Harry was left to understand.

It was a day like any other. Harry just dusting the old library, trying to put the books back in their original order, Kreacher sneaking around behind his back and sometimes watching with tired eyes.

“Well, that’s a lot of dark magic, I tell you,” Harry’s another failed attempt at conversation with Kreacher. “Look, a whole row on thrall-making, magically enslaving a sexual partner and inferi creation!” Kreacher’s frown deepened and left the room.

This, of course, brought another wave of awkwardness between them as Harry remembered quite clearly that Regulus must have ended up as one of those creatures after he dared defy the Dark Lord… Why was he so stupid, sometimes?

Later in the evening, a letter arrived for Harry and the owl that brought it was unmistakable. Of course, Malfoy’s invitation for 9 PM. The great horned owl hooted several times and waited. A reply, perhaps? Harry just found a sticky old ball pen and scrawled on a piece he tore from the Prophet “OK- I’ll be there, HP”, gave the owl a treat and attached his reply to its extended leg. This one had really sharp talons. He missed owls and was even more nostalgic about their long funny legs attached to such serious faces. Owls were the absolute best.

Harry was not all right.

He has not been “all right” or well or fantastic or great in a very long, long time, actually.

Why would anyone think he was?

He passed Kreacher’s room and went into his to put an ensemble that would constitute Malfoy dinner appropriate apparel. His new winter cloak completed the look and it was done so that Harry could hide another woolly creation knitted by Molly as a Christmas present. In his defence, he could always blame February weather to Malfoy.

Opening the drawer, he extracted Malfoy’s old wand. The poor thing gave a couple of silver sparks that reflected like fairy lights in Harry’s eyes. If he gave it back today, then… he was just saying goodbye to all his chances of coming in unannounced at Malfoy’s door, not that Malfoy ever treated him with any kindness. He was just saying goodbye to all those possible ways in which to pester him. Or… was he?

He grabbed it and put it in his pocket next to his holly wand. The two wands hummed and thrummed with magic as if they waited all day to stick together like that in Harry’s dark pocket. He felt sorry for it so he alternated dusting spells with it. He had to admit, Malfoy’s wand was better at cleaning than his own. And at finding missing socks.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll take you to your owner,” Harry mumbled. Talking to inanimate objects was nothing new to him. It was actually something he did now on a daily basis.

On his way out he passed Walburga’s portrait who was pretending to be asleep when she was not yelling at the top of her lungs about blood traitors. Something passes through Harry like a ghost, rendering him cold and resetting his nerves. It’s that sense of inevitable agency one has after a horrendous event or in Harry’s case, a horrendous stream of events interspersed with perfectly beautiful ones, a stream that started pouring towards this ineffable moment of neurosis since he was one-year-old, actually. Harry stops by the portrait, sighs and murmurs.

"Evening, Wally, I am going to visit a Malfoy tonight, your nephew through Narcissa Black. Any messages for him?” The old bat actually creaks an eye open and before she usually hurls another stream of insults, she seems to have stopped herself to think about Harry’s words. If a portrait was capable of expanding their consciousness, Harry would swear that Walburga’s would be one of them.

“Just send him my regards,” she utters perfectly constrained by an alien sort of resolve.

For the past six months or so, Harry’s been perfectly polite towards her unless her purist diatribes were completely out of control and she would be silenced with a spell or covered with a dusty carpet. He said he wanted to undo the permanent sticking charm that pinned her into her portrait so she could at least get to socialize with the others in the Grimmauld place. Ever since his consideration of it her behaviour, strangely enough, started to change. More than often she deemed Harry worthy of a reply to his Good Mornings or Good Nights.

“Good night, then, don’t wait up.” Harry finishes.

“Good night.” She croaks.

Walburga Black’s portrait was mad, isolated and lonely and she has just wished him a good night. He must have cracked… a long time ago. But Harry was going quite Janus-Thickey-ward-worthy mad, isolated and lonely as well and talking to the house, to its weirdly-designed furniture and its insufferable portraits helped. Also, all that care for magical creatures paid off since he found himself attending to its growing population of boggarts, doxies and other magical pests on a daily basis.

“Goodbye, elf bone umbrella rack,” Harry muttered as he almost always tripped over the bone-white piece that occupied a corner of the hallway. You see, he only needed to stroke Grimmauld’s flaky wallpapered walls from time to time and the old thing would shudder in gratitude. As he prepared to disapparate to the manor, he felt the wands heat things up a notch in his pocket.

Malfoy looked positively pickled. He seemed to have given himself a haircut that left his nape red and irritated. In his dark velvet suit, he looked like death warmed up. Pasty faced, pale eyes, always humid as if he’d cried all morning, noon and evening.

“Potter.” He said in form of greeting. It was shuddery and gruff.

"Hello, there," Harry grins and stares intently at Malfoy's face.

Yes, he’s definitely been crying. A lot by the streaky look of his cheeks. Pointy git!

“Enter and welcome to the manor.” He trailed as if the words themselves were suffocating him. Harry followed silently, fumbling with the humongous bottle of port he’d found in the Grimmauld cellar beneath a boggart’s nest. Horrible find, it was but he was so delighted to have snatched it after his third fainting-spell that day. Dementors, again, this time, tiny, ethereal ones. He scooped the nest and covered it with a threadbare curtain. He had absolutely no issue with the boggart family that dwelled in the bowels of Grimmauld. From time to time, when they were hungry, they dared to manifest in the hallway and Harry always soldiered through another hallucination: a shapeless dementor with a not so well adjusted mouth and almost pink claws. Definitely, they were losing their spark, the boggarts. That’s what being confined in a depressing house with a depressing tenant did to you.

Harry hummed, trying to make sense of the situation. He then settled for innocuous conversation.

"Wally, your great-great aunt sends you her regards."

Unimpressed, Malfoy simply snorted.

"Tell her I said hello."

Malfoy didn’t stop until they reached the dining room and Harry waited to at least be invited to a seat. Instead, Malfoy turned and gave him a very Malfoy look. It was all crushed ego, displeasure and post-cry irritation.

“This is where Voldemort made us sit during most of his councils. I ate at this table and here he snapped my father’s wand. I didn’t know my father could sound like a scared child but then I didn’t know a good deal of things.”

He plopped somewhere towards the middle of the gigantic table and frowned staring into blank space. Harry walked until he was parallel from him and dragged a chair. The scraping noise on the marble floor made Harry wince.

He plopped the bottle on the table right in front of them and Malfoy’s hand darted to turn it around and study it.

“Where’d you find this gem, Potter?”

“Under a boggart’s nest in my flooded west-wing basement.”

“Neat.” Malfoy quipped. His mood was coming back bit by bit. “Dementors still, is it?” of course, one could bet good money on Malfoy remembering all the sordid little details of Harry’s life and they would be rich.

“I think it starts as good DADA practice for me, you know? I began picturing them in Quidditch robes and the mouths now have lips and sometimes they wear red lipstick and sometimes their claws have red nail polish. Sometimes there are seven of them and for some reason, they are all on Cleansweep 7 models.” Malfoy looked at him as if he forced himself to understand what he was talking about. “And there’s less fainting, of course.” Malfoy knew very well what he was talking about. However, it was still difficult for him to imagine Voldemort in high heels and a blonde wig batting dark eyelids teasingly at him. That took more than fainting practice.

“Of course,” Malfoy said. “Your fraught subconscious mind now conjures pieces of Ginevra Weasley for your dementors, how bad do you have it, exactly, Potter?”

In lieu of answering Harry just scratched his head, pretending he was deaf in one ear.

Plates appeared in front of them and silver cutlery, then a roasted chicken with vegetables made its way along the length of the table as if the tray had roller skates as if a very angry troll gave it a vicious push.

Malfoy conjured crystal glasses.

“We should probably let it breathe,” he said gesturing to the bottle. “It’s probably still infused with tiny boggart babies nightmare fuel.” And Harry couldn’t care less, because that would mean he would actually dream something instead of the black void that filled his usual nights and most days.

“Awesome,” Harry replied and proceeded to take his heavy winter cloak and place it over a chair. There was only so much an old elf could do. Cook, clean, live with Malfoy… that must have been very difficult, Harry mused. He can almost picture it: quite as bad as having to wander the shifting corridors of Grimmauld place alone but this time followed by a pointy faced blonde that criticized his every step. There is a certain appeal to it, he muses but banishes the nascent thought with rapidity.

Then Malfoy did something that Harry never thought he would. He prayed.

_"Goddess of the verdant plains;_  
_God of the sun-ripe grain;_  
_Goddess of the cooling rain;_  
_God of fruit and cane_  
_Bless this meal I have prepared;_  
_Nourish me with love;_  
_Bless this meal I now share_  
_With you both above_  
_Blessed Be!"_

Harry stared at him wide-eyed. This really was something else. 

"What, Potter? never been thankful for your meal before?" Malfoy chipped.

"Um, no, it's not that."

"Blessed be." Malfoy muttered and took hold of the large serving pallete and with a knife carved the chicken roast and distributed it on both of their plates.

"Blessed be." Harry repeated in fascination.

"Do eat, Potter, this is a very good roast, I have to warn you." Said Malfoy challengingly.

“Mmm, Malfoy, this is very good!” He said as he pushed his fork through a piece of buttery potato and then crunched on the roasted chicken skin. He loved the salty crispiness it had, it reminded him fondly of Mrs Weasley’s cooking and of Hogwarts on a Sunday.

“Glad you do. I left it to slow-cook for a couple of hours in the great oven below. The potatoes are from last year’s harvest. The peas I bought from the muggle market. Did you know they came from a can? I had to use a cutting spell on it, mind you.” Malfoy was savouring the aftertaste of the meal and his eyes looked far above Harry’s head – Harry was now watching incredulously- did Malfoy cook this on his own?

“Alexander had the day off…” Malfoy said in lieu of explanation.

"Wait - did you just say _muggle_ market?"

Draco raised an eyebrow.

"Of course I said muggle market, _Scarhead_. Eat and don't you dare cast a heating charm on this perfection. I'm not using charms when cooking. It alters the taste."

He took another bite himself and almost purred in satisfaction.

"I do not amble in the wizarding world just so I have my face plastered all over the Prophet the next day, you know!"

"I can understand that." Harry could, of course, it wasn't as if Rita calmed down after the war either. She was one hell of a gossip columnist. 

“And the dessert is something that nearly made me as frustrated as preparing the Living Death Draft, took me hours to find a decent recipe in those old dusty books. It’s almost as time-consuming and precise as potion-making under Snape.” He knocked wood three times and then rested his very clean silver fork on his plate, in a very aristocratic gesture and moved for the bottle of port. “Douro, 1929, Portugal.” He read the dusty label, his pale, long fingers tracing the frayed label. “Very nice, Potter, very nice! We’ve had a massive loss in the wine cellar ever since the Manor was under Voldemort’s siege. He drank like a fish. Several bottles in a row. And that piss-face, Rowle, I caught him once nicking our best Mal-foi dry, white Sauvignon of the 1980s batch – the year I was born, mind you, I simply had to hex him.”

“You seem to know a lot about wines, I see,” Harry said to fill the silence.

Malfoy poured some into the glass and it was indeed, heavy, rich and dark red – just like blood. The smell… though… it was not bad. He almost hoped it would be vinegar and baby boggarts tears by now. It wasn’t.

“Magically protected and sealed, Potter. A wedding gift for the Blacks, apparently,” he turned the bottle to show him the label. It said “to the merry couple, may you always be happy and…” Harry strained his eyes, trying to figure out the words by reading aloud.

“…and push out as many pureblood babies as you can manage,” Malfoy supplanted and started laughing. Harry coughed into his glass, almost choking. It was a bit tart, the port. “or something like that.” Malfoy finished quite seriously, frowning at Harry’s tears of hilarity. He still coughed a good deal into the sleeve of his green pullover that Malfoy would probably deem too rustic for the elegant dinner he prepared.

“Merlin, Potter. You should lay off the whiskey and learn to appreciate the wines instead. You probably can barely taste the velvety softness of it.”

And Harry laughed now, he laughed so freely because Draco Malfoy knew him better than even the Wesleys. He knew him better than Ginny, even. And Ginny’s seen him naked.

And Malfoy talked. He talked and he was so very funny. It made Harry just want to have him on like a trusty radio all day as he scrubbed the grime of Grimmauld place.

He rummaged through the cloak’s deep pocket- extension charms be damned – and extracted the wands. They were at it again, the little fuckers. It was a bit embarrassing trying to pry them apart but the darker hawthorn wand, Malfoy’s wand, was bumping quite furiously into the holly.

They were going at it like rabbits and quite vigorously for some sentient objects. Harry dunked the whole glass of wine only to receive a disapproving stare from Draco Malfoy.

“Potter, what is this abomination? Why do they stick together like that? Why do they rub? Why do they vibrate so…lustily? Are they…?”

Harry cleared his throat. Surely, he could get used to drinking wine on a daily basis until his liver was fatty and floated in alcohol. What is it they said? Alcohol can preserve many things, dignity and health aren’t one of them. To hell with dignity and his liver.

Hawthorn and Holly apparently developed a strange relationship of their own. All that friction reminded Harry of the mating doxies when he tried to evacuate the roman bath downstairs.

“Fucking wands are fucking!” Malfoy snorted.

Harry had to agree. If two seemingly straight pieces of wood could fornicate, this was it. He waved his hand towards the scene while munching on another deliciously buttery piece of potato, swallowed and said.

“This is why I came here in the first place. To give you your wand back...”

“… And make me watch our wands rub each other to completion, Potter?” Malfoy was a bit enraged but poured himself a second glass and motioned for Harry to hold his glass as well. One thing was certain, Malfoy was not a stingy bastard, quite the opposite. He’s been so far, quite the generous host.

That chicken really was good.

“Malfoy, you cook really well, it’s delicious. Who knew you were so talented at this?”

Draco Malfoy’s face became a bit splotchy. He had a hard time with well-meant compliments like that.

“Thank you, Potter. It’s the least I can do – open the doors of the Malfoy Manor to the saviour of the wizarding world so he can partake in worldly joys.” He finished sarcastically but Harry took it as an accolade of sorts, nonetheless.

This made Harry smile and he continued his explanation by gesturing madly towards the wands.

“You see, I dog eared every page in the Black’s family library on wand lore. Yours is hawthorn, mine is holly, apparently, they can work very well together, as you can see…” his left hand made an evasive gesture and now the wands were bumping quite brutally into one another. Sparks were bound to fly. Green and red and silver and gold. It was like a very distasteful and corny display that would usually accompany one of Dudley’s massive cakes on his July birthday.

“Is this an attempt of yours to tell me that you can actually read books, Harry?” Malfoy looked a bit concerned as if Harry and reading or research could never work together in the same phrase.

“Um, no, what I am trying to say, Draco, is that in wand lore, red-berried Hawthorn like yours and red-berried Holly like mine are lovers’ wands.” He drew a fortifying breath. “Mine and Voldemort’s were brother-wands. His was Yew, mine was Holly, they were polar opposites. His was Winter Solstice, mine was Summer Solstice. Both had a phoenix feather core given by Fawkes, Dumbledore’s pet phoenix…” They were interrupted when the noises from the wands increased. Where those moans? And sex noises?

“What in Merlin and Morgana’s name are they doing, Potter?” The hawthorn wand was now rolling quite pleased to and fro and banging into the holly with the velocity of a hippogriff. He tried grasping for the hawthorn only to lift his fingers as if burned. Just like in their third year, Malfoy was clutching his hand to his chest with an expression of absolute derision.

“You traitor!”

Harry looked aghast and went for the bottle himself.

A shuddery moan erupted from the wands that were now rolling in tandem, left to right to left again as if they were very tired.

Harry poured one for Draco and in a fit of amusement clinked their glasses.

“To this!”

“To wands fucking on my table,” Draco muttered. “Did you know that Voldemort’s pet snake ate the Muggle studies professor on this very table? That monstrous fat-snake of his just… swallowed her whole.” He gulped alarmed that he might fall into yet another dark memory. “From now on, whenever I’m having dinner, I’ll imagine the wands going at it, instead.”

“It is a good thing, then,” Harry supplied. “Do bring dessert!”

Treacle tart came flying by a wave of Malfoy's hand. nectar of the gods - treacle tart à la Hogwarts. Harry could cry. He didn't though.

“You knew!”

“Of course, I knew, Potter! You were gobbling it up like a niffler would gold. I always thought we needed a speed-eating contest where the main is treacle tart and I would have put all my money on you.”

“How business savvy, you would have shared with me, of course?!”

But Malfoy was looking at him as if he was calculating his losses in percentages.

“How else could I have continued through your daily harassment; do you reckon? It’s only so much Hairy drawings I could collect!”

“You kept them?”

“Kept what?”

“My hairy drawings of you, you oaf!”

“Of course, I did! You gave them to me.”

Draco Malfoy looked a bit impressed, a bit proud of himself and a bit calculating. He barely touched the very fine cut of the treacle tart that he placed on his dessert plate. He was partial to chocolate.

“So… wand lore… you were saying?”

“Oh, right!” Harry said through a mouthful of creamy treacle tart. “This is delicious, Draco!” he had to agree. He wondered briefly if he could borrow Draco on weekends and lock him in the Grimmauld kitchen and bribe him to bake several courses of meals and then floo him away when before he would threaten to chop his head off.

“Yes, as I was saying, there seems to be an affinity between holly and hawthorn. They’re both summer trees in druidic lore. Yours is June, mine is July.” Malfoy nodded unsurprised that Potter already knew about his birthday. “Yours, just like many other wands that were bought by Hogwarts’ first years, was manufactured by Garrick Ollivander – you know, the man your father, Voldy's favourite Death Eater, kept manacled in his cell…”

Draco frowned at the mention of his father but he kept his mouth shut.

“Ten inches, reasonably springy, hawthorn wood collected in June, one unicorn’s hair that channels your magic consistently, the most difficult – _almost impossible- to turn to the Dark Arts_ – and here you are, the youngest Death Eater in history,” Harry coughed a bit, perhaps Malfoy could curse him nonverbally after all, “But I know it was never your choice, you are so bad at being… erm… bad… you should be the poster child for it, Malfoy.”

Thunk.

“Pass the bottle, Scarhead.”

Harry grabs the green bottle and pours until the last drop of wine falls into Malfoy’s glass.

“Santé, baby Death Eater!”

Draco Malfoy harrumphs. His cheeks are a bit red, but the rest of his face is pale and when his tongue flicks to moisten his lips, Harry notices it is tinged with the tannins of the wine.

“Your lips and tongue...” He almost giggled and motioned to Draco's mouth. After a scathing look, Draco chose to entertain him with his self-deprecating humour.

“Black, just like my baby Death Eater soul.”

“So I was saying,” Harry continued eyeing the wands that were now contently sticking to each other on the table where Nagini ate Charity Burbage and where Voldemort planned to dispose of him numerous times. “What we know about the unicorn hair used in wands is that it has some minor disadvantages since they do not make the most powerful wands. Plus, they are prone to melancholy if mishandled, meaning that the hair may “die” and need replacing. But I promise I didn’t mishandle yours. I just killed Voldemort with it. I mean, look at it, your wand’s a hero! All ten inches of it. I even used it from time to time, to dust the library, mostly, or make my bed, or scourgify my clothes, cast a spell to find my missing socks…”

Draco’s expression darkened.

Harry looked at him innocently in his inebriation.

“You must realize I had a lot of soot, mud and other gross stuff on my clothes since I had to mend the burst pipes in Grimmauld’s basement, and most of my socks must have been stolen by Nargles anyway since the house is swarming with them…”

“Have you been reading the Quibbler? Do you actually think the Minister of Magic has an army of _heliopaths_?”

“I don't think Kingsley has _heliopaths_ , Malfoy. And... to my shame, no, I don't really read the Quibbler, I sometimes leaf through it but I got stuck doing the crosswords section once and I completely gave up on it but Luna keeps sending them to me via owl. I do think I have a Nargles infestation, though, Malfoy, that's pretty serious.”

In a display of pique, Draco stabs his fork through the last remnants of his desert and forces himself to like the sugary treat. He shouldn’t have given in to his desire to please Potter today by baking this god-awful prosaic tart. He should have made _Forêt_ - _Noire_ cake instead; he should have let it swim in dark chocolate syrup just to have something calorically mortifying to stuff into his mouth when sitting through lectures on fucking wand lore.

“I’m sure it is, Potter, I’m sure you have to be de-nargled pretty soon. I could try and de-nargle you pretty hard.” He said in a faux-threatening voice that made Harry giggle. “back to my wand now, Potter, all ten inches of melancholy-ridden reasonably springy wood of it!” His pale ash-blond eyebrow wiggles suggestively and Harry was positive that Malfoy got very sloshed by drinking only four glasses of wine.

“Of course, your wand,” Harry chortled. The thoughts derailed into quite a facetious territory and to counter the attack on his imagination he briefly forced himself to wonder whether Nagini could digest the bones of Charity Burbage or whether she regurgitated them somewhere in one of the Malfoy fungus-infested dungeons. What a thought that was! But back to the wands. “You see, Pritchers and Woods say in their book that this particular wood combination is amazingly compatible and that this compatibility sometimes translates to their wielders, Draco. They are lover wands.”

“Of course, since you stole my wand, Potter,” Malfoy pretended he didn’t hear the last part. Oh, but he did.

“Winners, keepers, Malfoy! The first rule of duelling, if you remember.”

“That is not the first rule of duelling, you Crackpot.” He was growing a bit hot and he undid a couple of buttons on his dark as midnight shirt. The light coming from the chandelier tricked the eyes of the beholder into seeing his pale hair transform into a halo. Malfoy looked like an angel descended from heavens. He was radiant if Harry was verbally-inclined enough to use that word.

“Of course, your intention was always to make a fool out of me in that duel,” Harry countered.

“How should I have known you were a _parselmouth_ , Potter?! What am I, a mind-reader, fucking Sybill Trelawney’s Voldemort-filled fantasy? A _legilimens_?”

“If only you could read my mind, Draco…” He briefly tried to wonder about Nagini but honestly now, Draco Malfoy looked absolutely alive after half a bottle of wine, he kept being a pompous, elegant and extremely handsome prick as well. He thought about the wands, about Malfoy’s sneers all those years at Hogwarts, about Malfoy’s challenging Quidditch moves, about Draco on the floor, blood seeping from his chest like a fountain.

“I didn’t know I was one myself, you know. How’s your chest, by the way? I never found the time to apologize for that, I never knew what Sectumsempra was, I never intended to see you hurt.”

It left Malfoy astonished.

“You can’t be serious, Potter.”

“Oh, but I am. It came in handy, though, when I opened the Chamber of Secrets and killed that irrational basilisk, sure, but at least she’s been locked there for a thousand years by Salazar Slytherin – that is quite a motive, you know.”

“You know I couldn’t give a rat’s flying arse about your ability to talk snakes into submission Potter, basilisks included. It left a scar but that’s quite all right, at least I can cover it with nice clothes, unlike yours…”

“I want to see it, Draco. Ermm, Malfoy.” Potter sputtered like a _blast-ended skrewt_ in battle mode.

Draco Malfoy looked at him as if he sprouted another head.

“Finish the tart, Potter. I’d hate to pack it for you when you leave. It can be arranged, though.”

That gave Harry some hope and he was almost humming with giddiness.

“Fucking wands, Potter, fucking wands,” Malfoy muttered to himself as he eyed the two sticks rolling contently in fuzzy congress again.

*FIN*

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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